LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Continuing the enthralling stories of three Black women navigating life, love, social prejudice and racism in Sweden that began In Every Mirror She’s Black, Lola Akinmade Akerstroem’s Everything is Not Enough is a riveting, razor-sharp follow-up.
As the women face increasingly appalling challenges, their lives interlink in unexpected, transformational ways. You’ll be rooting for them to find freedom along every step of the rocky road. In a grippingly unsettling opening scene, we discover Muna survived throwing herself under a train. As her named next of kin, her friend Yasmiin has been called to her hospital bed, wondering what drove Muna to suicide, desperate for her to be woken from her medically induced coma.
Meanwhile, Kemi is facing more challenges as Director of Global Diversity and Inclusion at a big-league marketing company owned by Jonny Lundin, a member of one of Sweden’s most rich and powerful families. Feeling “she carries the impossible. A deep-seated responsibility to show the world she’s a Black woman making it in Sweden to inspire others”, Kemi embarks on an edge-of-your-seat path of destruction when she starts an affair with a married colleague, who happens to be Jonny’s best friend. While Kemi “feels like she’s choking under her colleagues’ judgment”, white man Ragnar faces no judgement, no penalty.
Then there’s Brittany. Married to Jonny, and mother to their daughter Maya, she feels horribly trapped, though still dreams of becoming a designer. Rejected by Jonny’s elitist family, she sets about uncovering what happened to his ex who looked exactly like her, and plotting her escape from his fetishising control.
Compelling, compassionate and insightful, Everything is Not Enough exposes the worst of white privilege and male coercive control while showing the possibility of escape and freedom.
Joanne Owen
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Everything is Not Enough Synopsis
The brilliant second novel from the acclaimed author of In Every Mirror She's Black follows three women as they try to navigate life, love, prejudice and privilege in Stockholm.
Yasmiin cannot comprehend what the policeman is saying to her. Her friend in a coma? Attempted suicide? Discovering she's listed as next of kin, Yasmiin looks to her friend's past to try and understand her actions, uncovering fresh mysteries at every turn. All the while, her own life seems to be running off course…
Kemi seems to have it all: a high-powered job, a beautiful flat, a loving boyfriend. So why doesn't she feel more settled? Unsure whether its homesickness, heartsickness or sick-and-tired-of-the-same-old-sickness, she embarks on a destructive path to try and change things up…
Brittany-Rae doesn't remember the woman she was before she met her husband Jonny. She knows she was an ambitious, confident go-getter, but now she's faded into Jonny's domineering shadow. And as she unearths disturbing secrets about her husband, she's focused on only one thing: her daughter, Maya, and ensuring she is as far away from Jonny as possible…
The three women's lives begin to overlap in the most unexpected of circumstances. Is it possible that the answer to their problems – though it seems impossible – lie in one another's hands?
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Press Reviews
Lola Akinmade Akerstrom Press Reviews
'Everything is Not Enough presents a fascinating and complex kaleidoscope of women's lives in Sweden, asking crucial questions around career, love, family, and the definition of success. There are no easy answers in this book - the characters are real, subtle and surprising and you root for them the whole way through.' -- Kathy Wang
'Compulsively readable... Akerstroem is a master at shading the gaps between power and love. This book filled me up like food. Everything about it is absolutely enough.' -- Chika Unigwe
Incendiary, emotionally devastating, absolutely wonderful -- Onyi Nwabineli
'Searing... Lola Akinmade Akerstroem writes with clarity and fearlessness, baring ugly truths amidst the strength and resilience of women who come into their own, while also coming into the beauty of hope.' -- Charlene Carr
Lola Akinmade Akerstrom weaves a complex tapestry of three women through her deft storytelling and absorbing prose. These rich characters' lives are complicated, messy and heartbreakingly real as they struggle with love, family and identity in a world that consistently thwarts womens' ambitions. Their passions, desires and vulnerability will stay with readers long after they finish this fascinating page-turner. -- Jo Piazza and Christine Pride
Author
About Lola Akinmade Akerstrom
Nigerian-American and based in Sweden, Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström is an award-winning author, speaker, and photographer. Her work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, BBC, CNN, Guardian, Sunday Times Travel, Daily Telegraph, New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Slate, Travel Channel, Adventure Magazine, Lonely Planet, amongst others. In addition to contributing to several books, she is the author of the following books: 2018 Lowell Thomas Award winner for best travel book Due North and bestselling LAGOM: Swedish Secret of Living Well, available in 18 foreign language editions. She has been recognized with multiple awards for her work, including 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Bill Muster Award, and she was honoured with a MIPAD 100 (Most Influential People of African Descent) Award within media and culture in 2018. Her photography is represented by National Geographic Image Collection. Lola is also the editor of Slow Travel Stockholm, an online magazine dedicated to exploring Sweden's capital city in depth.
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